The Smoke Jumper

by Nicholas Evans

  Now she almost took it for granted. Grassland felt like her second home and she had grown fond of Lexington. The people had a kind of old-fashioned courtesy about them which, having grown up in the cutthroat bustle of a city, Julia found both curious and comforting. And the more she got to know Ed’s parents, the more she liked them. The accident had drawn the three of them close and Julia could tell that they adored her, especially his mother, who now treated her like the daughter she had always wanted.

  Susan’s bravery over what had happened was almost as daunting as Ed’s. The shock and sorrow of seeing a favorite son blinded and burned were more than Julia could imagine, but Susan had kept her grief well hidden. Outwardly, from the start, she had been strong, practical and cheerful. Julia had drawn on this and tried to emulate it and, most of the time, succeeded. No one, not even the trauma therapist she had been seeing in Boston, knew what was going on inside her; of the terrible dreams she had, of the demons that came to visit her in the dark, dread hours of the night to squat on her chest as if they would flatten every ounce of breath from her lungs.

  She had always thought she would be good at therapy, and perhaps if she had found someone whom she trusted more, she might have been. The therapist she had seen was a Dr Schroeder, a small, delicate man with soft white hands and unsettling beady black eyes. His slow nod, presumably intended to convey understanding or sympathy or to coax more revelations, had the opposite effect. Several times she had been on the brink of telling him something important, then seen the nod and the inscrutable avian stare and a gate would come crashing down. Finally, during one of their weekly sessions, he called her Gloria and that was it. To get her name wrong was perhaps excusable, but Gloria? She never went again.

  The burden of guilt that she now carried sometimes seemed so heavy that during those bleak winter weeks, she feared her knees might buckle beneath it. Her mother’s attitude didn’t help; she belonged to the school of thought that considered cheery denial to be the appropriate way to handle such things. Whenever the two of them spoke, either on the phone or on Julia’s rare visits to New York, she always had some helpful homily to hand. It was just an accident. Nobody was to blame. It was time Julia moved on. Once she even said that there was no point in crying over spilled milk. Julia could barely believe her ears. Spilled milk?

  Her work at the institute was a dependable distraction. But at any time one of her pupils might say something or look at her in a particular way and suddenly she would see Skye’s face superimposed and hear her voice and Julia’s heart would lurch and start to race and she would have to struggle for breath. It was Linda who helped her through those wretched weekdays; who cooked for her and brought her cups of hot chocolate and came and sat on her bed and hugged her when she heard her crying in the middle of the night. Linda was the only one who seemed to understand about the guilt.

  Ten days after the fire, while Ed was still in intensive therapy, Glen Nielsen had driven Julia, Katie, Scott and Laura over to Billings for Skye’s funeral. They made up more than half the congregation. All through the service, Skye’s stepfather kept looking at her and afterward, outside the church, he strode over and called her a murdering bitch and said she had a hell of a nerve showing up. He started to yell and two of his friends had to restrain him.

  ‘You didn’t even leave us a decent body to bury!’

  They led him away. For many days afterward, Julia could barely speak.

  In Boston, on her way to and from the institute, she had to pass a Catholic church and occasionally, after school, she would stop and go in and sit at the back. Usually the place was empty, though sometimes there were vagrants sheltering from the cold and perhaps a figure hunched in prayer among the pews or lighting candles of devotion. Julia thought of doing both these things herself. She even thought of seeking out the priest and asking if he would hear her confession. But then, what would she say?

  Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I killed a beautiful young woman on a mountain and blinded my boyfriend. And, oh yeah, five search and rescue helicopter guys died as well.

  How many Hail Marys would it take to be absolved of such sins? she wondered. To seek forgiveness seemed almost obscene. For some sins there could be no forgiveness. And even if God, assuming there was one, forgave her, how could she forgive herself? What right did she have even to pray or to light a candle? Instead, she simply sat and stared from the darkness toward the pool of light around the altar and at the shining gold and blue and white figure of the Blessed Virgin with her puzzling smile and at Christ above, forlorn and crucified, blood dripping from his wounded flank and down his face from the crown of thorns. Julia stared and stared, hoping to feel something. Not forgiveness, not pity even, but perhaps some soft radiation of comfort. But she felt nothing.

  The water in the bathtub was cooling now and she tilted back her head and wet her hair and quickly washed it. Then she hoisted herself out and wrapped herself in one of the Tullys’ thick towels and dried herself, thinking about Connor and wishing she’d stayed in Boston for the weekend or gone to see her mother in New York.

  She had done her best to conceal how much she wanted to avoid him. Ed had only sensed it the last time Connor came to Kentucky when again she had made herself absent. He asked her why and she told him it was because she was ashamed of how she had behaved toward him on the day of the fire. It was the truth, but not the whole of it.

  Secretly Julia was more ashamed of what she had felt for him last summer and of what, if she were to allow herself, she still felt for him. Even before the fire, these had seemed like a betrayal of Ed. Now they seemed little short of monstrous. Julia knew where her duty lay and so long as Connor was out of sight and many miles away she could bury her feelings for him and get on with looking after Ed.

  But at the airport it had all come flooding back. The sight of him walking toward her, the way he’d looked at her with those pale blue eyes, the sound of his voice. She had hoped to God that he wouldn’t hug or kiss her and when he did and put his arms around her, she felt something break inside her and it was all she could do not to collapse and cling to him and cry on his shoulder. She managed to hold back the tears until she went off to get the car. In the parking lot she’d sat with her head bowed on the steering wheel, sobbing.

  At least now she felt a little stronger. She dried her hair and dressed quickly in a pair of black velvet pants and the dark green cashmere sweater that Ed’s mother had given her at Christmas. Before the fire she had rarely bothered with make-up, but nowadays, without it, the sight of her face in the mirror scared her. She was all gaunt cheeks and cavernous eyes and with her short hair she felt she looked like a cancer victim or a survivor from a prison camp. As she was making herself up in the bathroom mirror, she heard Ed’s special little knock on the bedroom door, the one he used when he came to her room at night after everyone had gone to bed.

  ‘Milady?’

  ‘I’m in here.’

  ‘Milady’s presence is eagerly anticipated in the banqueting hall.’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  He was practicing using his cane and she heard him tapping his way across the bedroom and saw him appear in the mirror behind her and stop in the bathroom doorway. He had nicked himself shaving and there was a dried trickle of blood on one cheek. She turned and went to him and he propped his stick against the wall and took hold of her and kissed the side of her neck.

  ‘You smell so good, I could eat you.’

  She smiled and stood still while he slowly moved his hands up her body from the back of her thighs all the way to her shoulder blades and then under her arms to hold her breasts.

  ‘Just checking you’re suitably dressed,’ he said.

  ‘Uh-huh. And?’

  ‘Feels okay to me.’

  She could feel him stiffening against her stomach. She reached behind her for a washcloth and dabbed the blood from his cheek.

  ‘Damn, did I cut myself?’

  ‘Just a little. There. All gone. Com
e on, let’s go down.’

  ‘What, now? Right here? Okay.’

  ‘Downstairs, smarty-pants. Have you had your shot?’

  ‘Yes, Mom.’

  ‘Have you told him yet?’

  ‘No. I thought we’d tell him after dinner.’

  Being blind, so far anyhow, didn’t seem to have a lot to recommend it. But there was one thing that Ed had noticed: he was always as horny as a hound in a hot tub. He’d heard say that with loss of sight one’s other senses became heightened and this was all he could put it down to, unless one of the umpteen pills he now had to take had some wondrous side effect that nobody had dared mention. With all the work he was doing, learning how to live in his new benighted world, he often got very tired. But he was never too tired to make the trip each night to Julia’s room. He even joked with her that he didn’t need a cane to find his way there because the one he was born with was out there in front doing it for him.

  It wasn’t as if his sex drive before he was blind had been stuck in first gear. Far from it. There had been scarcely a night when he and Julia hadn’t made love. But now that he could only feel her and smell her and taste her, he felt turbocharged, as if those particular veins were filled with some new high-octane fuel. Not that he considered himself a great lover. He knew that he was sometimes too eager and often too quick. But he liked to think he was generous and that what he lacked in finesse he more than made up for with diligence.

  With his broken hip and all those weeks that he’d had to spend in the hospital and at the rehab center, it was a long time before he and Julia had been able to make love again. At the center he had been plagued with worry that she might not find him attractive anymore. He had mentioned this to one of the counselors and the guy tried to reassure him, saying it was common for newly blind males to feel this way, that losing one’s sight could have an emasculating effect. Far from reassuring him, this had made him even more worried and by the time he came back he’d managed to work himself up into a frenzy of selfdoubt.

  But Julia had dispelled it. That first night back at Grassland, he had fumbled like a freshman on his first date but she held him and helped him and he could feel how much she wanted him and ever since it had been as good as ever, better even. Apart from his own heightened senses, the only change he noticed was in Julia. There was something in her lovemaking that hadn’t been there before, a kind of sad intensity into which she somehow seemed to disappear.

  The others were all at the table when he and Julia came into the dining room. He heard the scraping of chairs and knew his father and Connor had stood up.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault. I nearly cut my head off shaving.’

  ‘Why don’t you use that electric shaver I got you?’ his mother said.

  ‘I like to live dangerously.’

  There was a moment of silence. Julia steered him to his chair and took her place beside him.

  ‘Come on, let’s eat,’ his father said. ‘Connor here is about to die of starvation.’

  He called for Annie, the Filipino cook who’d been with them since Ed was a child. They sat chatting while she brought in the first course. Ed sniffed the air. It had become a ritual that he always tried to guess what was being served.

  ‘Okay, Annie. Let’s see. Smoked salmon and—’

  Annie laughed. ‘You’ll never get it.’

  ‘And . . . those old socks you threw out last week.’

  She slapped his hand gently and put his plate in front of him.

  ‘Cucumber and mint surprise.’

  ‘Cucumber that smells like socks, that is a surprise.’

  While they ate, Ed’s father asked Connor about his flight from Montana and then launched into a tedious monologue on the merits of various airlines. He asked Julia which airline she used from Boston and Julia replied politely. It was the first time she had spoken and Ed wondered why she was being so quiet. Probably bored half to death by the conversation. It was time to liven things up.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Did you hear about that flight attendant who got caught banging - sorry, Mom - having “intimate congress” with a passenger the other day?’

  ‘Nope,’ Connor said. ‘But I’ve a feeling you’re gonna tell us.’

  ‘Well, if you insist. They fired her and you know what? Ticket sales went through the roof. Every flight fully booked. Now they call it “the airline that gives a fuck.”’

  ‘Ed, please!’ his mother said. ‘Connor, what can we do with this boy?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Tully, I hear the white slavery business is still pretty big in some parts of Asia.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. We’ll sell him.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Ed said. ‘What kind of price would you get for a blind, diabetic, failed composer.’

  ‘What do you mean failed?’ his mother said.

  ‘Mom, it was a joke.’

  For a while everyone was silent. Annie came in to clear away the plates. Then Ed’s father spoke up.

  ‘So, Connor. What do you think about this pair of love-birds here getting hitched and all?’

  Ed felt like kicking him under the table. But it was too late.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tully?’ Connor said.

  ‘These two . . . Hell, Ed, haven’t you even told your best friend yet?’

  Ed took a deep breath.

  ‘You guys are getting married?’

  ‘We were keeping it as a surprise for later. Thanks, Dad.’

  He reached for Julia’s hand and found it and felt a tension there that surprised him. Perhaps she was just annoyed, as he was, at his father blurting out their news. He clasped her hand in both of his.

  ‘Yes. I picked my moment, got her exceedingly drunk, popped the question and, incredible as it may seem, she said yes.’

  He leaned toward her and they kissed each other on the lips.

  ‘Well,’ Connor said. ‘That’s great. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Ed’s mother said. ‘We’re all so happy.’

  ‘The cat seems to have gotten Julia’s tongue,’ his father said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

  Her voice sounded strange but Ed figured she was simply embarrassed. He came to the rescue.

  ‘How about that you’re really, really lucky, given all the thousands of beautiful and talented women you had to compete with, to have snared such a fine figure of a man.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘I think you should propose a toast, Jim,’ his mother said.

  ‘Before you put your foot in it again.’

  ‘You bet.’

  Ed could hear them all picking up their glasses.

  ‘To Julia and Ed.’

  His mother and Connor repeated it. The glasses clinked.

  ‘And health and happiness.’

  Connor watched her sitting on the rug in front of the great fireplace. He and Ed were sitting in an imposing pair of leather armchairs, high-backed and deeply studded, facing one another across the hearth, each cradling a globed glass of Jim Tully’s finest brandy. Julia had her back propped against Ed’s legs and was staring into the fire and Ed was absently stroking the nape of her neck while he finished another story. Connor could see she wasn’t listening and he wondered what she was thinking.

  They were in what Ed’s father called the den, though it was twice the size of most living rooms. There were two leather-topped tables stacked with books and the walls were lined with hundreds more, many of them ancient and bound in hide. Ed maintained that his father had bought them by the yard and never read a single one. The floor was a patchwork of old oriental rugs onto which four tall brass reading lamps with green glass shades cast pools of light. Above them the room remained dim and shadowy and the firelight flickered on the ceiling.

  Ed’s parents had gone to bed, so now it was just the three of them. Suddenly there was silence and Connor realized that Ed had asked him a question.


  ‘Sorry, man, I was just thinking about something. What was that?’

  ‘I said, we’re really sorry about the way you found out. We wanted to tell you ourselves.’

  ‘Hey, that’s okay. I’m just real happy for you both.’

  Julia turned from the fire and looked at him. Twice at dinner he had caught her staring at him, but on each occasion she looked away immediately after their eyes met. Now she held his gaze steadily and he knew she was gauging whether he had spoken the truth. He tried to read what else was in those dark eyes apart from sadness, but he couldn’t. And this time it was he who first looked away.

  ‘When’s the wedding?’

  ‘The last Saturday in June. I need to get a little fitter first. You know, for the honeymoon.’ He laughed and Julia pulled a face and tapped him on the knee like a schoolmarm. ‘I’ve asked all my friends but nobody seems to want to be my best man, so I wondered if you’d do it.’

  ‘I’ll have to see if I’m available. Where’s it going to be?’

  ‘Here. We wanted to do it in Montana, but until we’ve found a place, we figured it was simpler to do it here.’

  ‘Found a place? You mean you’re coming to live in Montana?’

  ‘Hey, pal, it’s a free country.’

  Connor looked at Julia and she smiled and gave a little shrug.

  ‘That’s great.’ Connor tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere around Missoula, if we can find the right place. Listen, sorry, guys, I’ve got to go take a leak. I’ll be right back.’

  He put down his glass, found his cane and stood up. Julia started to get up too, offering to take him, but he declined sharply, saying that he could find his own way to the john, for heaven’s sake. It was the first glimpse of irritation Connor had seen. Julia settled down and looked into the fire again while the tapping of Ed’s cane faded across the hallway.